


Love Means Always Knowing when to Summon the Eldritch Abomination

by Kantayra



Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [27]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Apologies, Eldritch Abominations (Cthulhu Mythos), Forgiveness, Humor, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 08:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30136758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: The Eighth Doctor always had been fickle. Good job the Master had learned how to best earn his forgiveness.
Relationships: Eighth Doctor/The Master (Macqueen), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592659
Kudos: 18





	Love Means Always Knowing when to Summon the Eldritch Abomination

**Author's Note:**

> I felt bad for destroying the Eighth Doctor's favourite sex toy/lethal trap back in 'Masterplan', so I figured I would make it up to him. Also, I've been listening to Stranded, and it makes me sad because, back when 3 was stranded on Earth, Delgado!Master turned up to ~~flirt with him outrageously~~ cheer him up. But where was the Master in Stranded, hmm?! He has a lot to apologise for!

The Master sighed and glanced at where the Eighth Doctor was hunched over some alien teleportation device or other on the far side of the console room, with his back to the Master, deliberately ignoring him. “Are you going to sulk in the corner all day,” the Master demanded, “or are you going to come see where I’ve taken you?”

“Oh, sulk all day for sure,” the Doctor said definitively, offering the words breezily into the empty air before him as if refusing to acknowledge the Master’s presence even that much.

The Master did some grumbling and sulking of his own and landed the TARDIS with slightly more force than was strictly necessary. He absolutely did not smirk to himself when the Doctor yelped and fell over backwards and dropped his stupid teleporter in response; the Master was _far_ too suave and sophisticated for such pettiness!

The Doctor glared up at the Master and rubbed the back of his head as he scrambled up to his feet. “Must you be so consistently petty?” he demanded.

“I am not petty in the slightest. I am far too suave and sophisticated for that.” The Master had already had the thought of course, but it was such a good thought that it bore repeating.

The Doctor let out an undignified snort and shoved the remains of his teleporter into a leather jacket pocket that was roughly a third of the size of the device. The pocket didn’t bulge in the slightest; just how big _were_ the Doctor’s pockets on the inside, anyway? “Fine, if you’re going to be immature about it, let’s see where we are.”

The Master couldn’t help but smirk to himself at that. He knew the Doctor couldn’t resist a destination – or a mystery. The Master strutted with a saucy swing in his hips (if you’ve got it, flaunt it, baby!) over to the TARDIS doors and threw them open with a dramatic bang. “ _Voilà_!” he proclaimed in the most terrible, mangled attempt at a French accent he could manage.

The Doctor peered out of the TARDIS over his shoulder. “Oh no…” he said with dawning realisation. “Is that…? Tell me you didn’t…?” He pinched a weary thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose.

“Oh, I most certainly did,” the Master confirmed with every last bit of smarmy self-satisfaction he possessed, which was a truly impressive amount of smarmy self-satisfaction.

The Doctor glared at him. “Baker Street?” he demanded. “ _Seriously_?”

“Absolutely!” The Master all but skipped free of the TARDIS and out into the empty street.

The Doctor stalked out angrily after him. “Wasn’t it bad enough that I got stranded here during my lifetime? Did you really have to bring me _back_? Do you have any idea how bored I was last time? I promise you, I’ve already seen this place. For entire _months_ , even!” The way the Doctor said ‘months’ came out slightly strangled, like he couldn’t imagine anything worse than having to pass linear time for such an unreasonable duration.

The Master waggled his index finger in front of the Doctor’s face and tsked disappointedly. “This time will be better,” he promised. “Do you truly distrust me so much?”

“Yes, definitely. I distrust you with everything.”

The Master blushed with pleasure. “Doctor!” he said in a faux-scandalised tone. “Please, we’re in public. Save the pillow talk for the bedroom.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes and shoved his way past the Master. (Ha! The Doctor could never resist exploring, despite all his objections.) The Doctor turned down the street and then froze, wide-eyed at the sight before him.

If the Doctor had been paying attention beforehand, he would undoubtedly have thought it odd that they were standing in the middle of the street and traffic was not honking loudly at them and/or attempting to run them over. Now, however, the reason for the lack of traffic made itself quite apparent.

The Doctor looked up, and up and up and up.

The monstrosity towered over the city, taller than even the highest skyscraper. Its body was mostly an inky black cloud of miasma that swirled and wormed in and out of reality when one tried to look at it too closely, as if it might actually be composed of trillions of skittering insects or else perhaps it hadn’t fully materialised within this dimension. It hurt for even Time Lord eyes to focus on it for too long, so the Doctor looked further up to where a hundred or so snake necks burst from the top of the repulsive fog. Each neck was oily black and scaly, with two eyeless snake-like heads on the end. Each of the snake heads had a pair of ram’s horns, and each ram’s horn ended in a snapping crocodile mouth, and each of the teeth in the crocodile mouths was yet another snake’s head, this time with seven eyes apiece as if to make up for the lack elsewhere. At its base, where the beast was crushing buildings with wild abandon, was a mass of writhing tentacles that ended in sharp, snapping mandibles. In total, the monster encompassed an area that must have measured at least a square mile.

The Doctor’s throat went dry, and he finally dared to stammer out, “I-Is that an… _eldritch abomination_?”

The Master strolled leisurely up until he stood beside the Doctor, hands shoved insouciantly into his suit-jacket pockets, exceptionally pleased with himself. “Why, yes, it does appear to be one, doesn’t it?”

The Doctor turned to look at him in stunned disbelief.

The Master waggled his eyebrows at the Doctor. “Nothing but the best for you,” he promised. “The nastiest one I could find, in fact. After all, I believe I owe you an exceptionally fun new plaything, after I was regrettably forced to take away your last one.” He frowned for a moment, suddenly apprehensive. “You don’t think I’ve gone _too_ overboard this time, do you?”

The Doctor gulped. “It’s erasing all of London from the time-space continuum and condemning all the people to the eternal torment of the existential void.”

The Master looked back up at the eldritch abomination and studied it. “Yes, it does seem to be doing that, doesn’t it?” he agreed. “Someone should probably put a stop to that.”

The Doctor’s face suddenly broke out into a great beaming smile, as if he were the personification of joy itself. “ _Thank you_!” he giggled in delight. And then: “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you…”

At some point during the endless, rapidly accelerating profusion of the thank-yous, the Doctor clutched the Master’s head between his palms and began peppering kisses all over his face and bare scalp. The Master went a little bit fuzzy in the head at that point, the way he always did whenever the Doctor doted the appropriate amount of affection upon him.

“Thank you!” the Doctor finally concluded redundantly with one last, loud peck right on the Master’s lips.

He abruptly released the Master, and the Master might have staggered forwards awkwardly, still a bit love-struck. “Huh?” The Master blinked blearily, trying to process that kissing time was apparently over.

“Right,” the Doctor agreed, and turned back to the giant eldritch abomination that he could now call his very own. He dug all the way up to his elbow into his tiny coat pocket and pulled out the teleporter he’d been tinkering with earlier. “Do you think if I wired this into the traffic signals, I could set up a portal network that I could then tune back to its home dimension? Of course, I’d need to find the right frequency…” He had pulled out his sonic screwdriver now and was tweaking the device, mouth babbling a mile a minute with sheer boyish enthusiasm.

He was absolutely magnificent, the Master thought sappily, and thoroughly ogled the Doctor’s brilliant, ridiculous mind as it worked.

“Of course, I’ll need to find a way to lure it into the interdimensional portal…” The Doctor frowned.

At that moment, one of the abomination’s twin-heads (and all the various other subsidiary heads contained therein) caught sight of them and hissed in a high-pitched scream designed to drive men mad. The Doctor and Master’s Time Lord psyches just barely managed to cling to their sanity (such as it was).

“Not to worry,” the Master assured the Doctor. “Technically, we’re allies in this plot to destroy the Earth, and it’s right about time for my ill-begotten ally to betray me.”

“Really?” the Doctor asked hopefully, eyes bright. “That’s brilliant! That’s perfect! _You’re_ perfect! Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!” he started babbling again as the Master stepped forward to meet his fate.

The eldritch abomination’s mouth was an endless pit of horror, and its gullet was lined with millions of soul-searing eyeballs of the damned, and its saliva had a truly foul stench from the deepest pits of Tartarus – which would absolutely ruin the Master’s suit – but what was a little time spent in the digestive tract of one of the fundamental, existential terrors of all creation, compared to the Doctor’s forgiveness? It was far from the stupidest or most unpleasant time the Master had let himself be swallowed whole in order to gain the Doctor’s favour, even. And the sweetness of the Doctor’s ardour once he’d finally saved the Master would be well worth the temporary discomfort.

And so the Master let the creature devour him with a delighted laugh and a cheeky wink back at the Doctor, who looked downright ecstatic as he toggled wildly at his jury-rigged contraption. Honestly, the things they both did for love!


End file.
